"Projections?" Yang Kai frowned. That was something he hadn't considered. He had only found the situation odd — if the Heaven and Earth Furnace was about to manifest, why had over a dozen phantom images appeared across the various Great Domain battlefields, with even one present here?
If these phantom images were merely projections of the furnace's true form, that would make sense.
"Is this intelligence the Ink Clan gathered?" Yang Kai asked.
Monaye replied, "It's my own deduction."
Yang Kai nodded slightly. He didn't need to question Monaye's intellect too much — given the intelligence currently available, if Monaye had sat down to analyze it carefully, he would very likely have arrived at the same conclusion.
"Anything else?" Yang pressed.
Monaye pondered briefly, then said, "Based on my observations, these projections are slowly solidifying. You should be able to see it too — it's been several months since they appeared. At this rate, it will take roughly another two years before they fully solidify. My theory is that when the projections are completely solidified, the Heaven and Earth Furnace will truly manifest!"
Yang Kai looked around, probing the degree of solidity of the local projection, then compared it to what he'd observed several months ago. After a quiet mental calculation, he reached a conclusion similar to Monaye's. At this pace, the local projection would indeed need around two more years to fully solidify.
"The timing of the furnace's manifestation can be roughly determined, but its location remains a mystery. There are currently over a dozen projections — no one can say for certain which one will reveal the furnace's true form. So I believe there are only two possibilities."
"What two possibilities?" Yang Kai asked.
Monaye cast Yang Kai a look tinged with grievance. After so many years of clashing with Yang Kai, they understood each other fairly well. Yang Kai's actions might seem reckless and impulsive, but in truth, every move was carefully considered. With his talent and all this intelligence before him, it wouldn't take much thought to arrive at the answer.
Yet here he was, too lazy to think it through — or perhaps deliberately probing just how much intelligence the Ink Clan had actually gathered, using the lives of numerous Domain Lords as leverage. The worst part was that Monaye could do nothing about it.
"One possibility: the furnace will randomly manifest its true form at one of the projection locations, and all other projections will be mere illusions." Monaye laid out his theory without daring to withhold anything — it wasn't definitive intelligence to begin with. "The second possibility… all the projections are intrinsically linked to the true form. Wherever a projection exists, the Heaven and Earth Furnace will manifest its true form!"
Yang Kai listened attentively and nodded. "That does seem reasonable. Those are indeed the only two possibilities."
Making such deductions from the available intelligence wasn't difficult, but neither Monaye nor Yang Kai had any idea that regardless of when the projections solidified, the furnace's true form would never appear. What this supreme treasure of heaven and earth actually looked like, no one had ever seen — not since the ancient times.
Once those projections solidified, they would simply be an entrance leading into the furnace's interior, and the so-called fortune lay hidden within.
This wasn't because Monaye or Yang Kai lacked intelligence — they simply had too little information, and both had come with a preconceived notion. The Heaven and Earth Furnace was called a furnace, so naturally it must be some wondrous alchemical cauldron. Who would have imagined that the interior of this furnace contained an entire world of its own?
Monaye fell silent — not because he didn't want to continue, but because he had no more valuable intelligence to share. He immediately sank into deep contemplation...
Yang Kai didn't push him, and likewise fell into thought.
Something came to mind.
He didn't know much about the Heaven and Earth Furnace. The only knowledge he had was that inside it, heaven and earth naturally gave rise to Pills of Creation that could help warriors break through their own limitations.
But years ago, a powerful human expert had once told him that every time the Heaven and Earth Furnace manifested, it would unleash a storm of blood and carnage!
At the time, he hadn't known much about the Three Thousand Worlds, and his cultivation hadn't been particularly high either. He hadn't grasped the depth of those words, simply assuming that with such a treasure, everyone would want it, and the so-called storm of blood was caused by the powerhouses of the various Blessed Realms fighting over it.
But now it was clear that wasn't the case.
In the countless years since the late Ancient Era, the various Blessed Realms had been devoted to sending their best talents to the Ink Battlefield to hold back the Ink Clan's powerful foes. Even the Ninth-Order Old Ancestors were stationed at every major stronghold. There were many Blessed Realms, but throughout these years, they had worked in unison against a common enemy.
With an external threat at their doorstep, how could the powerhouses of the Blessed Realms possibly stir up a storm of blood and carnage fighting each other over the furnace's fortune — cutting off their own limbs? Such foolish behavior was something the Old Ancestors would never allow. If it ever happened, they would personally intervene to purge their own ranks.
If that was the case, then where did the storm of blood and carnage come from?
Yang Kai quickly hit upon a key point.
The intelligence Monaye had just revealed indicated that the furnace's projections all appeared in places where great numbers of living beings had perished. This time, the furnace's manifestation was accompanied by projections across the various Great Domain battlefields, the Void Domain, the Primordial Great Restriction, and even here — the best evidence of all.
If that was true this time, then what about before?
In the past, there had been conflicts within the Three Thousand Worlds, but no large-scale wars — at most, minor skirmishes between sects. Even with casualties from those, the dead warriors wouldn't have been very high in cultivation.
But unlike the relative peace within the Three Thousand Worlds, the fighting on the Ink Battlefield had always raged fiercely. Every time the Ink Clan launched an assault on the strongholds, vast numbers of living beings perished...